Shiny Media

There really is only one place to be in the first week of January and that is not hanging around a semi-deserted, freezing cold London listening to people moan about how long it is to their next pay day. Nope the place to be is of course in sunny Las Vegas for the world's biggest and most exciting consumer electronics show CES 2008.

This year you won't be able to move for Shiny staff - we have seven bloggers out in the city - who'll be posting all the latest news, getting hands on with the coolest new gadgets, doing strange things with video and generally having an amazing time.

So if you'd like to say hello, please get in touch via here.

Ashley

Day two of Le Web 3 and it's time to give the latest raft of internet start-ups a hard time. Over 30 companies were invited to do an 'elevator pitch' - a kind of Dragon's Den but without the pantomime - and most of them, it seemed, failed to impress the judges including renowned blogger Robert Scoble and venture capitalist Saul Klein of Index Ventures.

In many instances, there was a suspicion that they weren't even solving a real problem, but simply showing off some neat looking technology that had little value in the real world. Presentations were generally unprepared, they weren't very slick and they also seemed talk an awful lot about how great they were without actually showing the product at any point (I did wonder how Shiny Media would fare if we were asked to do our pitch to venture capitalists again!)

Basic questions were left unanswered (such as how is this even going to make money) and while a lot of them seemed keen to let everyone know about how cool their technology was, they didn't actually spend much time showing the technology. As Robert Scoble pointed out:

"Don't talk about the team. Show us some sex appeal. Wow us. It's like dating a girl. Make sure you have a story to tell to nail your pitch," said Scoble.

Highlight of the afternoon so far was the bunfight between Emily Bell of The Guardian Unlimited and controversial 'Cult of the Amateur' author Andrew Keen - the Floyd Mayweather and Ricky 'Hitman' Hatton of the Web 2.0 world.

Whereas Emily believes that the internet is generally a good thing for established media organisations, Andrew believes user generated content and social networking generally is undermining traditional media.

Round one = Emily Bell gets off to a great start with lightening quick comments. "We would be more and more irrelevant if we didn't let people interact."

Round two = Andrew Keen fights back. "Guardian is a very valuable resource. Unlike other sites it doesn't allow kids to spew their crap and their journalists are paid."

Round three = "Internet is a fantastically vibrant right of reply. Your history follows you around. It needs to be an iterative process" (Emily Bell)

Here we are in Paris at Le Web 3 - a big Web 2.0 party, sorry, conference, where the great and good of the internet world - and bonkers designer Phillipe Starck - come together to chat, eat pastries and watch the ebullient host Loic Le Meur bounce around the stage like a mad thing.

Typically, it's gone midday and I've only just got the flakey wi-fi working, but here are the highlights so far. Designer Philippe Starck talked at length about sexual ergononomics - how to make sexy furniture that you're not ashamed to show your granny. He was also doorstepped on stage by uber-blogger Robert Scoble who asked him to evaulate the design of Amazon e-book reader, the Kindle. Surprisingly, unlike Scoble, he didn't think it was rubbish but questioned whether the designer had really gone far enough in losing 'his identity'.

... to enter our fantastic competition to win a Shiny Media internship! Yep, the LG Video Media Talent Award closes on 16th December. So, if you want to a) bag a trip to the 3GSM conference in Barcelona, b) learn about videoblogging from the Shiny Media team and c) win your very own LG Viewty to document your Shiny Media internship; you need to click here quick sharp.

Some eager individuals have already stolen a march on the competition by getting their entries in early - check out the below entry from Pollyanna Woodward. If you think you can do better you know what you need to do!

When we launched the Pies clubs sites (Arsenal Pies, Chelsea Pies, Liverpool Pies, Manunited Pies and Spurs Pies) back in August we hoped that they, in conjunction with the main Pies site, would pull in over half a million readers per month by the end of 2007.

Well thanks to some amazing growth, particularly on Spurspies, we not only reached our target a month early but have actually smashed through the 600,000 barrier.

It is all down to some fantastic content from Ollie Irish, Jonathan Weinberg and the rest of the team.

We are now aiming for one million readers per month across the whole network by the end of the season.

Forget The X Factor. If you want to be famous, or at least get your first step on the showbiz ladder, then you need to enter our exciting new talent competition. We've got together with our friends at LG to create the LG Video Media Talent Award.

Two internships at Shiny are up for grabs for the lucky winners - one for a budding video presenter and one for a video production person. So if you fancy becoming the next "Gadget Guru" like our own Susi Weaser (below), a star of Shiny Fashion TV or a behind-the-scenes production wiz, then watch the video below. 

Entering requires you to submit your own videos to our YouTube channel - click here to see what other people have submitted so far! So how do you enter the LG Video Media Talent Award? By simply clicking here that's how! The competition runs until December 16th - so not much time to dust off your camcorder and editing software.